Always, it seems to come back to that awful silence.
I’m uncertain about why my mother would have been so intent on finding out his identity, but for now, the more important question is what she found out.
“Did she discover anything?” I ask, leaning forward.
Halle’s lips purse. “Well, she had theories.”
Damn.More theories. But I guess they’ll be more than I had before.
“One was that a volunteer wasn’t needed at all—that the arcane magic was so evil that the keeper sprang into existence from darkness itself,” Halle says. “Another theory was that the dark creature who volunteered did so under strict secrecy. After all, a dark being choosing to do something so heroic? That might not go down so well with other dark creatures, and maybe they had a family to protect.”
My forehead puckers, and without me saying anything, Halle nods.
“I agree. Neither of those rang true to Galeia or me. Which led Galeia to her final theory. A far worse one.”
“What was it?”
“She believed that there could be no greater darkness than the corruption of pure goodness.” Shadows grow in Halle’s eyes, and, for a moment, her deathly side seems to spread across her living face. “How truly evil would it be to take an innocent being and force it into darkness against its will? Such a cruel act would create a force powerful enough to tether dark magic for millennia.”
Suddenly, all I can hear is the echo that sounded in Veritas.
“My life was stolen.”
“I paid the price for crimes that were not my own.”
“What greater darkness could there be?”
“If you’re right, then the keeper was—” The words stick so hard in my throat that I can barely utter them. “The keeper was a good person.”
“A truly good, innocent being.” Halle nods. “A being without malice or cruelty or spite. That was your mother’s belief.”
The shadows in Halle’s eyes only deepen as she continues. “But there’s more.”
I’m struggling to process what I’ve just learned means, let alone that there could be more.
There is such a chaos of emotions within me now: disbelief, sadness, and, ultimately, rage.
Rage, because I am a dark creature who was also imprisoned for no crime at all.
The keeper wasn’t even born into darkness, but he, too, was cast into it without reason or justification.
Oh, the vengeance I would demand if I were him.
A thousand times more furious than the vengeance I already want for myself.
Trying to control the fury in my voice, I ask, “What more could there be?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Halle doesn’t release me from her gaze as she says, “It was Galeia’s belief that it should have been her.”
My furious thoughts halt. “What do you mean?”
“Her heart was made from dark metal. Regardless of which Blacksmith had created it for her, and even if it had been created out of love, the metal from which it had been made wasn’t pure. So the very thing that should have condemned her—that darkness—also saved her.”
Sudden pain billows up within me and the pause in my fury ends.
Anger rushes back to me in a flood.
